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navy sea dart..air classics mag

i sent a friend a note about the story in this months air classics magazine about the sea dart,this was his responce to me..

Dave,
I served on the Sub Tender in the background, when they used to run the Sea Dart back and forth past it. My work space was in the forward engine room, and I used to sneak up and man the rails every chance I could get.
One day they were going to show off the Pogo, a big turbine powered plane that stood on it's tail and had two counter rotating blades they had been trying out over at Convair. they had the press all out there. I herd that why didn't they show off the Sea Dart too, but it still wasn't quite ready yet, but they went for it any way. anyway they called out "PLANE CRASH, PLANE CRASH, STARBOARD SIDE" so many yards, I don't remember how many, but I knew it wasn't a drill. I rushed up and saw a small patch of burning oil, and the speed boat that always chased the plane when it taxied back and forth, heading towards shore, and the pilot's stocking foot hanging over it's edge, toe pointing down.
Later we were all gathered in the forward mess hall, to watch the evening news on the TV. The Dart had taken off and circled around over the city for a low pass. The guy on the TV said "And here comes the Sea Dart, but the camera man got a good shot of a sea gull, The plane was pretty small to see when coming striate at you.
They say said that the plane started to buffit, and a ball of flame could be seen behind it, and caught up to it. It was pretty low, and went right into the water. And I missed it..
Afterwards they came abord and wanted any photos that anyone had, so they could study them.
They had more than one plane because in a day or two they had another one out there going back and forthAttachment 64958

It was the USS Nereus AS17, I was on it for about a year. Went into the yards in Hawaii. Then got transferred to the sub rescue ship, USS Florican ASR 9, and spent about 3 years on it. Went to Japan twice on it. We went into the dry docks in Oakland, and lived in a 2 story house on a barge for a while then. Christmas was coming up, and I lost the vote whether we would go back to San Diego, or stay in SF for the holidays. Too many crew members had families in San Diego. In preparation for the trip, we steamed back and forth in the bay doing the measured mile, to test equipment. then a barge came along side to load back aboard our ammunition, what little we had, and started out. we had to cancel the special sea detail men on the bow because of the advancing edge of a storm was approaching, and we started taking water over it. We hade a great time steaming down the coast. Turned out this was the storm that flooded Marysville, and washed out the levy over at Nicolas. I didn't get to come home until a while, and when I did, Butches mother and her mom and dad, took a ride out west of Lincoln to check things out after to flood. Dave, what really impressed me the most, was the grass in the telephone wires. I vowed to never live down there